PRESBYTERY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 2009 ANIMUS …



PRESBYTERY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 2009 ANIMUS IMPONENTIS CONFERENCE

Reverend Alan Strange – Lecture 1

Well, it is good to be with you, to greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and I don’t assume to speak for all the speakers, but just to say thank you for having us out here to think together with you through these issues. I think this is an encouraging sign. As we have seen it happen in many of our presbyteries, one of the things the Creation Views Committee has encouraged was these kind of forums, theological forums, study, discussion, and I am happy to see that you brothers take that very seriously. It is good to be here with you to think through these things together.

There are a number of passages- this is going to be really exegetical – but the spirit of all that we are doing here, though we are not going to be exegeting Scriptures largely in this conference – the spirit of that is very much of the Word of God and of the unity that the Word of God speaks of, of the purity that the Word of God speaks of. Let me just read Psalm 133- there are a lot of places we could look to – I was just looking at the High Priestly Prayer – you all know that very well – our Lord prays for the purity and the peace and the unity of his own. But, here we read in Psalm 133:

“Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.”

And may our gracious God be pleased to now and always sanctify us and bring us forward in that unity that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, animus imponentis, what in the world does that mean? And why on earth is this sensible presbytery having a conference to talk about it?

Well, first of all, animus imponentis or “AI” if you will just permit me to call it, and that doesn’t mean “artificial intelligence” – I am sorry for those scientific types. Somebody asked me once what I thought about artificial intelligence, and I said it sounds like a great idea, I think it’s the only hope some of us have! But, at any rate, I have some good colleagues here who have real intelligence, so I will take the AI. But, AI is an old legal term, hence the Latin, applied apparently beginning in the early nineteenth century to ecclesiastical church law and government. It means “the intention or the mind of the imposing body,” referring to the church as the body that oversees the officers who receive and adopt the confessions and catechisms of the church. This obviously needs to be further unpacked and it is for this reason, as I understand it, that this good presbytery is holding this conference – So we can tease out some of the implications of this.

We come here to think together through these matters of how we go about being a confessional church, and in so doing I would like us to focus just in my time here on what AI means and doesn’t mean – what I playfully call the “hits and myths” of the animus imponentis - and additionally I would like to more in the concluding talk think through together the talk I gave a few years ago at the Candidates Credentials Conference, the first one that was held by the CCE, which was on handling difficult issues in the theology exams for candidates in the gospel ministry, with some application to I know what are some current concerns here.

So, I would call your attention first of all, then, to what AI means from what you were asked to read at least by me in advance of this conference. You were asked to read some sections of the report of the Committee on Creation Views, and an article that I have recently published that talks about animus imponentis but not in respect to creation, but in respect particularly to the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, the Westminster Assembly of Divines.

Well, to get into the subject proper now, as noted just a moment ago, that Latin phrase, animus imponentis, and that’s kind of a mouthful, I realize that, is employed in constitutional law, according to Black’s Law Dictionary – animus – which is Latin for soul or mind, when used at law, particularly constitutional law, often indicates intention and is maybe best translated that way. So, the intention, we might say. And imponentis means the imposers, or in this case that imposing body. The animus imponentis, then, refers to the intention of the imposing body – and so we employ that term in church law, ecclesiastical law, and there is such a thing as that, as a way of highlighting that in church law as in civil law, attention must be paid not only to the actual words of the constitution itself, but also to the intention of the body that would interpret that constitution. Well, in ecclesiastical law as in all constitutional law, judicatories or courts that interpret the constitution should pay first of all the most careful attention to the words of the constitution itself. In other words, a presbytery when it is examining someone, for example for licensure or ordination, should pay the most careful attention in terms of what the examinee says – should pay most careful attention to what the words of the constitution themselves say – in terms of how to understand and correspond what that person being examined is saying with the constitution. So, the words of the standards themselves as a faithful putting together, we might say, and interpretation of the words of Scripture itself should always be the first concern of all presbyters and judicatories. The words “drafted and adopted by the framers” serve as the form of unity – we don’t so frequently refer to it as that, but you are familiar that the continental churches speak of the Belgic and the Heidelberg and Dordt as the Forms of Unity, Unity meaning saying the same thing together – that is what we are doing in a confession – we are saying the same thing together. We are going to the Word and we are saying, this is what the Word teaches on X and Y and Z, and we are confessing it, and this binds us together. This is expressive of the unity that we have in our Lord.

Well, the animus of the church, however, we might say is shaped not only by the words of the constitution itself, but also by the church studying and giving heed to what the original intent of those who framed the confession or its amendment was, among other things. Original intent – now we bring something else in. We have the words themselves, what does the document say – what does the Westminster Confession say – the Larger Catechism, the Shorter Catechism – but then we can talk about original intent and think about that in terms of getting a handle on this. Original intent, like animus imponentis, is also a technical term. That may not sound so technical, but it is a technical term when you speak about original intent. It is a technical term and it refers to what the framers of the document, whether a civil or ecclesiastical constitution, had in mind when they wrote and adopted the constitution. Now, you may say when you hear me say that, “well, that’s kind of a challenging thing, might it not be?” Yes. What they had in mind is not always so obvious. It is not always so easy to establish. You have the words themselves and this is sort of, well, what might be behind the words. What might be behind the words is a part of this task of interpretation. So, we say relevant to this task of getting at original intent you could say, a survey of the writings, the public and private writings of the framers, as well as records of debates that occurred in the process of drafting and adopting the constitution. Now, you have to be careful here, because what you might find in a letter or some expression in a diary or even in a sermon of a framer, you may get some idea of what that person meant, but then of course there is the whole question of well, how does that fit into the collective of what actually came to be affirmed, and what is often the case is you may have, for example – take this example – there were very strong views on eschatology at the Westminster Assembly. Now, you might say, well, it doesn’t seem like it. I mean, I was a dispensationalist and that is strong views – I mean, I was brought up in a church where if you weren’t pre-trib, pre-mill, pre-everything you were questionable. So, you look at Westminster, those closing chapters, and it doesn’t seem like they had that kind of maximal approach. Oh, there were all sorts of views, but they chose not to make those things confessional. They chose to have a minimal confession about eschatology – comparatively speaking to what one might have. So, it is the case that while you can read what this or that person may say, they may not choose to enshrine that, and so this is a very complex thing. There is a lot that goes into this question of original intent.

So, thus far, to recapitulate, we have the words of the standards themselves interpreting the words of Scripture itself, together with the original intent as best we can ascertain that, and there will be disagreement about that and it is no small feat. All of that is part of what goes into making up this thing we call animus imponentis.

The imposing body then, we say, is concerned with the words of the standards themselves and original intent, but here is a new element, a third element, we might say – additional light that the church gathers as it goes forward confessing this faith together – additional light from further Biblical theological work of the church. What I mean by that is, this additional light could bring firmer conviction. For example, there is a question –and like I say there was just this recent article that I wrote, Jeff Jue and others have written some articles that talk about this – the question of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ at Westminster. Now, some of us have argued that if you put the whole thing together there does seem to be at least some sort of an implicit affirmation of the active obedience of Christ, but it is certainly not explicit in the way that it will tend to become in the theology of the church as the church firms up, you might say, its convictions on that. Not believing that there is a need necessarily to modify or amend, but the church comes to firmer convictions. Another one Dr. Fesko has written on this, and I mention this as another example in that article – the question of definite atonement, which is certainly not denied at Westminster – and again I think you can argue that it is implicitly there in places where you could clearly pull it out, but there were Amaraldians there and they chose not to confess that as clearly as they did at Dordt, for example. I mean, you don’t find in Westminster the kind of affirmation that you find at Dordt. That is not to say there is any lack of concord there, but it is just in greater explicitness. However, since the Westminster confession, we have come to firm up, and there have been other confessional and theological developments. And, so, the point being is when a man comes before a presbytery now, if he were not to affirm definite atonement, and he were to do it on the basis of saying, “well, it’s not as explicit in Westminster as it was in Dordt, and I question whether it is really there and thus, you know, I don’t have to believe it” – our churches would say, well, we read this, we read this, we take this and perhaps we firmed up significantly in our understanding of it. We take it to affirm and we affirm definite atonement. And, this third element is what goes into the animus imponentis in the way that we are talking about it here. The church can say we have come to see what may even have been a bit implicit. We have come to hold it more firmly. We have come to hold it more firmly, and thus we wish to more firmly, as part of our animus, see this as our confession, see this is as what it is that we believe. So, we say that this additional light or firmer conviction about a matter permits the church to hold something more clearly or firmly than may be suggested by what we know of original intent, never in a way that is at variance if it is faithful with any of the words of the standards, but interprets those standards in a particular way.

Now, here is one, too, sort of going in the other direction. It may be argued that the divines intended exclusive psalmody. Notice I say argued, because I know some people thing it is a slam dunk. I don’t think it is. There is a lot of work you have to do in terms of the original intent. But, are they absolutely saying that? It is certainly arguable, and it is probably shades in the direction that they are. But, do the words of the standards clearly demand it? Some people would say they do. But, the church hasn’t read those words that way. And, of course, you could say, well, the church has been unfaithful. Well, that is certainly an argument, but whether it has or not, the church hasn’t read the confession generally as requiring exclusive psalmody, and so there has been some elasticity in the way the church has – and that is part of the animus imponentis – the way the church has interpreted that over time.

Well, as I noted in that “Confessing Presbyterian” article on animus imponentis, I think that is particularly relevant and I think it is important to note this, when dealing with the Westminster Confession and catechisms since they weren’t the product of an ecclesiastical judicatory. We have to keep that in mind. Unlike the products of so many previous church councils and judicatories. Because the Westminster Assembly of Divines was a body that was advisory to the English Parliament. They were not a general assembly, they weren’t a presbytery, they weren’t a classus, They were not a church judicatory. And, why do I point that out? Well, when you talk about original intent, there is a certain sense in which the original intent of the Scottish church in 1648-49 as it adopted those documents, of the American church in 1729 and 1788-89, and then the OPC in 1936, you know, it is interesting, is that animus imponentis strictly speaking or is that even original intent? In other words, you can talk about original intent, the original intent of the divines is not as important, when the Scottish church adopts it, that’s the general assembly, and they are taking this document from these good men that the Parliament called to advise it on the reform of the church, but it is when they impose it that you have the church taking this up and imposing it. And, so, I think that’s important that we keep that in mind because some would argue that the adopting acts by various bodies – ecclesiastical judicatories – savors more of an original intent situation than an animus imponentis one, that is to say simply the church’s collective understanding.

Well, the concept of animus imponentis – AI – finds further significance in that the church is not only the authoritative interpreter of its constitution, but it imposes on its members the oaths and vows that they take to maintain and defend that constitution. Animus imponentis means in this respect that when an officer in the church subscribes to the constitution of the church he does so with the explicit understanding that the valid intention as to its meaning is that of the church as a whole and not merely his own private opinion. For example, as we indicated earlier, if a man coming into the OP denies the imputation of the active obedience of Christ or definite atonement, he shouldn’t take the position when asked about differences or scruples with the standards that he has none. You see what I am saying? Some might say, “well, it doesn’t seem to me that Westminster requires the imputation of the active obedience of Christ in our justification, so I have no differences.” Well, there needs to be honesty there. Now, he might say “I don’t think it does, but I understand that most people think that it does,” and so a man needs to say “I don’t agree with the active obedience, the imputation of the active obedience,” or a man needs to say “I don’t agree with definite atonement.” Because that is, as we confess and hold this together, that is what we believe. And, so we say that one coming into the OP should not take the position that he has no differences because he personally believes the standards don’t teach those doctrines. The OPC would regard either of those positions as at variance with the standards as now understood by the church regardless of the candidate’s insistence that the standards don’t teach them. This is part of the animus imponentis, this is what this means.

So, backing up just a bit now, how is the intention of the church to be gathered? How do we know what this is? Most obviously, the meaning of the constitution going back resides in the words themselves. The intention of the church, then, is to be gathered by a careful reading of precisely what she has stated in her standards. The standards of the church are already themselves, as we said, an interpretation of the Scriptures as saying together what the Bible teaches in the various parts of the theological encyclopedia. To be sure, the standards themselves must be interpreted but not in the same way that the Scriptures must be interpreted – not precisely the same, I mean by that. The Scriptures, for instance, don’t employ technical theological language in the same way that the standards do. This is because the constitution of the church containing as it does the secondary in the confession and catechisms and tertiary in the Book of Church Order, because it contains those standards as the church’s agreed upon interpretation of Scriptures, they need to most clearly and seek to most clearly set forth what the church believes. The standards are by their very nature a theological formulation laid out in a logical orderly fashion amenable to quick reference summarizing those major teachings of the Bible, which is to say presumably, wherever the standards address an issue they do so with maximal clarity. Now, there are things in Paul, Peter tells us. Right? Peters says there are things in Paul, as well as in other places of Scripture, that are hard to understand. The Bible itself says that – that there are certain things that are hard to understand. “Unlearned and unstable men wrest them” as they do all the Scriptures, Peters says, “to their own destruction.” But, it is assumed that the standards don’t in the main contain such obscurities because you are trying to make clear what is taught, so you are not going to expect obscurities of that kind in the standards. It is particularly the province, if not to say the burden of the standards to teach doctrine with clarity and precision, since they serve as the church’s interpretation of the Word of God on these key issues.

But, we mustn’t imaging, having said that, we mustn’t imagine that we only interpret the Scriptures and not the standards. While it is true that the standards ought always to serve to clarify what we confess together the Bible to teach, we still have to interpret the standards; that this interpretation should not be purely private but taken to account how the church as a whole reads its standards, is the concern of the animus imponentis. That having been said, it is important as well to assert that the church ought to interpret, to be sure, her standards consonant with the meaning intended at its adoption or modification as best as that can be ascertained. It is inimical to constitutional government for the church to interpret her constitution in some way that is at variance with the words, that is obviously at variance with the words, and the original intention of the framers or the adopters. To disregard the standard’s clear statement about a particular doctrine and to believe otherwise in spite of what is confessed is the mark of a declining, if not to say apostacising church. We know what happened to the PCUSA and the doctrinal train-wreck called “The Confession of 1967.” When the church came to believe that the Scriptures teach something other than what she has confessed the Scriptures to teach, integrity demands that she amend her constitution in the manner that the constitution itself prescribes for its own amendment. For the church to refuse to amend her constitution to reflect her current understanding, but instead to read it clearly at variance with its plain meaning is to render the concept of the church as a confessing church meaningless. All this is to say that the concept of animus imponentis, and you might recall this got highlighted when this report was looked at, may not be employed so as to make a wax nose of the standards and to pit the church’s interpretation of the standards against the plain word of the standards itself, particularly inasmuch as we said the standards are thought to contain but few obscurities, rather animus imponentis rightly understood and employed means simply – it is not a threatening thing- it means simply that the church as a whole in its integrity interprets its own constitution and that such interpretation and not those of private individuals or lesser judicatories is decisive. The concept, then, of animus imponentis is significant because it ensures confessional integrity and, of course, unity. It means that the church can read and understand its own confession and it is that shared corporate meaning that binds the church together. Thus, when one subscribes to the standards or takes his ordination vows to uphold the Constitution of the OPC, he does so explicitly affirming the constitution as understood by the church as a whole. Otherwise, the enterprise is futile, just as a shared Bible that no one agrees on as it its teaching is useless, so a shared confession that all subscribers read radically differently is of no real value. Think of it – there are those that say “no book but the Bible – no creed but Christ.” Well, just to say this is the Word of God but we can’t agree on anything it means, we understand as a confessional church that does little – there is no value in that. But, then, further to say, okay we have a confession, we have a confession, but we all read it every man to his own tent – we read that radically different. You’ve just moved the problem back to another level. There needs to be a mutual reading together of the Scriptures and then some degree of mutual reading together of our confessions. It is not ones own interpretation, as we are saying here, or even that of a particular presbytery that is to prevail, but this animus imponentis, the intention of the church as a whole, which church as a whole imposes the oaths and vows through its particular representatives. So, the animus imponentis means that one is to understand the standards in the sense of the words as commonly understood in the church. The standards are then not to be understood in some wooden, literal fashion that a punctilious reading by a particular candidate or judicatory might yield. Sort of like someone who fancies himself a car expert because he has read the Chilton manual 100 times, but he has never popped the hood of a car, and never looked underneath. You can’t read the confessions or even our church order and understand what it really means properly unless you’re part of the process – you see what it’s like fleshed out. Things can be very confusing. You don’t know how this really manifests and works itself out. And, so, there needs to be that kind of experience. I think of a fellow when I talk about a wooden, literal fashion, it would be like saying this, another example might be something like this – You must use only wine in communion. Now, let me say – I think you should use wine in communion. I think that’s what our Lord teaches. But, do we take the position that if you have the fruit of the vine unfermented you are not having the Lord’s Supper. Now, I think you should have it fermented. But, I know a fellow in a presbytery who on principle would vote against every candidate who not only would say that, yes, you had to affirm wine, but you had to say that anybody who would use other than wine is not having the Lord’s Supper, and if you were charitable and you said well, yeah, I think you should use wine, but I’m not willing to say everybody who uses grape juice never has had the Lord’s Supper – that kind of a position there. Or, I have heard it said that someone in an exam said that he believed that the office of the Pope is the antichrist, and they said – no, no, no, we don’t believe that. Well, we don’t confess that, but that doesn’t mean, as I understand things, that you’re forbidden from believing that. We don’t confess that as a matter of confession. Well, they took that out because, well it was something they weren’t willing to say together, but again you get into the whole question of additional sorts of things. A lot of eschatology falls under that rubric. Do we score people for holding eschatological positions that are broader or beyond or in addition to what we have confessed? Now, that is a misreading of confessions, but some people want to take that kind of approach. Or, the standards may be given an overly elastic, loose reading that some particular candidate or presbytery might hold. In the former instance, a new fellow, a novitiate, might not understand the texture that a particular passage in the standards has assumed as the church has read those standards and he might read them in a very idiosyncratic and rather wooden, overly strict fashion. Or, we might say in the latter instance, in the loose fashion, a candidate might believe that he can subscribe to the standards, taking the words to mean whatever he chooses by them in his own private counsels. And, so we say the concept of animus imponentis which stand over against both approaches – a too strict or too lose approach and would indicate that the standards are to be subscribed in the manner in which the church understands them as best as that can be grasped. Another way I think of putting it is that the standards – we do speak of subscribing them ex animo – from the heart or the soul – not with equivocation or mental reservation. To do otherwise, as Hodge rightly observes, and Dr. Fesko and/or Professor Muether are going to be talking some more specifically about Hodge and the Princetonians – to do otherwise as Hodge rightly observes in his discussion of animus imponentis he says it shocks the common sense and the common honesty of men. And, at that point, Hodge talks about in his Church Polity, he says this, “it is no less plain that the candidate has no right to put his own sense upon the words propounded to him. He has no right to select from all possible meanings which the words may bear the particular sense which suits his purpose or which he thinks will save his conscience. It is well-known (now see how this gets used here) – It is well-known that this course has been openly advocated not only by the Jesuits but by men of this generation in this country and in Europe. The chemistry of thought, it is said, can make all creed alike. Men have boasted that they could sign any creed. Professor Newman (he is talking about John Henry Cardinal Newman) just before his open apostasy published a tract in which he defended his right to be in the English Church while holding the doctrines of the Church of Rome. He claimed that for himself and others the privilege of signing the 39 Articles as he called it in a ‘non-natural sense’ that is in the sense which he chose to put upon the words.” That is the way he said I can take the 39 Articles though I have become a Roman Catholic in my mind, I can still take this. And, Hodge’s entire argument here was that the notion of animus imponentis safeguards the integrity of the standards and doesn’t allow one to put whatever construction he may choose to put upon its words. Thus, as is plain, AI is not a radical notion, but a conservative and preservative one. The church interprets the Bible in the standards and the standards in the operation of the judicatory go forward with that. This is the animus imponentis.

One might well argue, then, that inasmuch as animus imponentis serves as a check for those who would want to make the standards mean whatever the individual candidate or judicatory wishes to make it mean, the concept of animus imponentis is necessary to preserve the purity, peace and unity of the church. Without such a concept, every man understanding and subscribing to the standards in an individualistic fashion would result in ecclesiastical anarchy. I mean, just think, we know that this doesn’t literally happen, but if everybody said “well, I interpret this differently” and we are all questioning the candidate on the basis of our interpretation, and we know they are radically different, it would render the fact that we have a confession itself meaningless because we couldn’t agree on what the confession even means. So, keeping in mind the animus serves to check such subjectivism and to preserve the purity, peace and unity of the church.

Well, I think that’s enough about animus and some of what it means and that may have seemed a bit tedious and repetitive, but it wasn’t – it was building off of certain concepts and trying to be careful there in defining this in a way that is not seem to be radical, because it is not, but properly preservative.

I’d like to now just think, to end our time here tonight together, thinking about – those are sort of the “hits” – thinking about some of the “myths” associated with animus imponentis. These are things that I have heard and read out and about as people sort of mull over this concept of animus imponentis which I know is new to many and it sounds very odd. Somebody thought this was a conference, I was told, about nature or something – animals – they weren’t sure – but it sounded like animals somewhere in there.

But, anyway, These are the five myths that I want to set before you here.

Myth Number One: We interpret the Bible, but not the Westminster standards. Now, sometimes that gets said, and I understand where that is coming from, but let’s think through that together. It’s an understandable error given the nature of the standards, as I argued earlier, as clear statements of doctrine. I agree – the standards are clear statements of doctrine. The Scriptures contain obscurities at points. It tells us that itself. The standards aren’t supposed to contain obscurities of that kind so much. If they do, we should straighten them out, we should make it clear. But, one I think could wrongly assume in saying we interpret the Bible but not the standards that they need no interpretation. Rather, they need only to be received in their teaching. Well, this is similar to the fundamentalist’s error about the Bible – “No book but the Bible, no creed but Christ” – applied to the creeds. Let’s not think that creeds neither warrant nor need interpretation. Of course they need interpretation. The hermeneutical task can’t be escaped. They are going to have to be interpreted. The Word is interpreted in the creeds and confessions and then we are going to together interpret our creeds and confessions and we are going to administer them. You can’t escape that. That’s the hard work of the church. Sometimes we want at some level everything done for us. It’s like, I tell my students this all the time – I teach church polity – and I say you can’t have reformation by tweaking the polity and getting it just perfect because the best polity that we could have from the Word of God if it’s administered by men of ill will will fail. Please don’t be shocked here. I’m not Episcopalian at all. But, then I’ll go on to say episcopacy if the bishop is a good man could have some good things happening. Now, I don’t think that’s the Biblical form of government – I think Presbyterianism is, but I don’t think because we have the form Presbyterian that we’ve got a lock on things. That’s just not the way it works. We have to always be faithful. We have to come before God and in humility look to Him and serve Him together, communing with him and each other as members of His mystical body. There is a real spiritual aspect to this that can’t be gotten around. So, one can’t preserve doctrine by saying, well if we could perfect our confession (I’m not saying we don’t need to – our confession doesn’t need to be as clear as we can make it), but to say, you know, this is how we’re going to have reformation and everything we need by getting it all down. No. We have to continue to serve faithfully and humbly. Interpretation, the hermeneutical task, is at every level inescapable. The question, then, is not whether we interpret the standards – we do. The question is whose interpretation prevails. My possibly idiosyncratic one? Or the one that the imposing body acting in integrity holds? And, of course, as I’ve said, that really refers ultimately to the whole church. One may object that the imposing body might be wrong, and it might – we don’t believe in the infallibility of the church. I don’t. I don’t know about you. I don’t believe the church is infallible. I believe the Word is infallible. One may object that the imposing body might be wrong, or is not acting in integrity, but that’s another matter and remedies for such exist in our Book of Church Order. There are ways that we have to address unfaithfulness, but we need to recognize here that we do interpret our secondary standards. Variations of interpretation on a particular matter in the imposing body could signal on the one hand, it could mean departure from the faith. If you say, there is this interpretation and there is this interpretation, maybe this interpretation means departure from the faith, but it can’t be assumed. What do I mean? Please follow me here. You’ve got a doctrine stated in our confession. You’ve got some various ways of understanding or interpreting the confession. It may be that this party over here is faithless or it may be that this particular doctrine in terms of some of the specifics has about it or there is a proper elasticity. There are certain doctrines that we say- no, we want this in the narrowest way confessed this way. Or, there are other things that we may say, well, there is a permission here. I think John will be talking about the millennial issue. And, I think you can read the standards in certain ways that would have a certain millennial point, but we have not read them that way. Now, maybe you think we should read them that way. But, that isn’t the way we read them. We haven’t read them as clearly excluding certain historic positions. And, so, here’s what I am saying: The fact of different interpretations on a particular matter doesn’t mean that there is a terrible departure from the faith, but it may mean a proper elasticity in enforcing the confession on that particular point is at issue. Think of the issue of exclusive psalmody. Now, I understand that those who may be committed to exclusive psalmody say, well, you’re wrong. But, the fact is that we have an elasticity on it. You may not like that there is an elasticity on it, but there is. That’s just a fact. One has to judge and act accordingly. There is no escaping that hard work. We can’t eliminate the hard work that the church is called to do always by reducing everything to rules – have as many rules as you wish. That’s what I was saying earlier. Governing bodies have to apply and interpret and make hard decisions. You just can’t get around making hard decisions. You just can’t get around it.

Okay. Here is another myth. We should do or be able to do without this confusing notion of AI. I can appreciate that. We should be able to do without this notion. What do we need this for? Well, I have agued here since it is inevitable, it exists. We can no more do away with it than we can do away with the active interpretation and application itself – the hard work that the church is called to do. Nothing is automatic. It must be administered. So, do away with all the talk of AI and speak of the church’s view. Just say, well, this is the church’s view on this. Well, it’s the AI, but you’re calling it the view – or something else. AI is still there.

So, I think that the notion that we interpret the Bible but not the standards, that’s not quite right, or that we can do without AI, we’ll call it something else if we do, then.

Then, there’s that third one – we’ve mentioned it a lot before – that the animus makes a wax nose of the Westminster standards. And, that of course means that the concept of AI can be employed against the plain meaning of the words or what seems to be the original intent of the framers of 1646 or 1936, and thus permit a liberalizing church in effect to amend the constitution without having to go through the hard work involved in the process of constitutional amendment. And, this has most surely happened at various times in various places. In other words, a liberalizing church hasn’t wanted to or bothered to or thought it wise to amend its constitution but “wink-wink, nod-nod” nobody believes it any more. You can’t simply say, well, if we disagree on something that’s what we’re doing. No- you have to show that that’s what’s happening because there have been differences (we are going to see this from some of the other brothers in terms of the historical development) – that there have been differences all along, and all differences are not the same. And, if we can’t distinguish what’s most important – God help us. That is a mark of a declining church – if a church is mired in what could be thought to be at some point obscurantism. We do need to be able to distinguish what is most important and then ranging out from there. And, so we say yes, this can happen. You can have a liberalizing church that doesn’t want to amend the constitution but doesn’t believe it. It can happen and we can’t do something that would guarantee that it won’t other than seek humbly to walk with our God, keeping on our knees, we might say in this regard, praying the church continues in integrity to adhere to its confessions or to modify it if she believes that Scripture warrants or demands such. Some would see any affirmation of AI as analogous to what the courts – and I’ve heard this before and I understand that and it certainly can be used that way – what the courts in the U.S. have done vis-à-vis the U.S. Constitution, which is to say changed it by a method of loose construction without it having been duly amended. I understand that. We can speak of a faithful AI or a faithless AI, but there is one and the mere presence of it or mention of it doesn’t signal that one wishes to play fast and loose with the standards. There is sometimes a notion that you’ll hear: “Well, if you talk about animus imponentis you want to money around with the standards.” Well, no. That’s not at all necessarily the case. You can monkey around with the standards without ever mentioning the word AI. AI is just recognizing this reality of what we do in terms of our interpreting.

Here’s the fourth: The OPC (and I am coming to a close here) by its dalliance with thinks like AI evidences signs of downgrade. Now, this is a fairly important charge. It is a fairly important charge. You want to be real careful. We cannot only slander persons, we can slander whole bodies, and we want to always be careful when we say something like that. Downgrade cannot I believe be successfully alleged merely by noting that the church believes that there is such a thing as AI and spells trouble. We have seen that there is an AI and it is either relatively faithful or faithless in any given circumstance, but one man’s faithfulness is another’s obscurantism and one man’s faithlessness is another’s charity. Rather, a full court press must make the biblical and confessional case that the church has departed from the truth if that is what is going to be done. If you’re going to say the church has departed from the truth then you have to make a full court press, I think, not that it has permissible exegetical differences. You say, are there such things as permissible exegetical differences? Well, of course. We know there are. And, we have to be able to distinguish between that and true doctrinal divergence. If a person takes this position on this in the confession, is this doctrinal divergence or is this more of an exegetical difference on this point? The church has to make a determination. If one wishes to make the case, for example, in regards to the length of days, then that case should be made in all the proper ways as to what the particulars of that are. We’ll talk more about that.

And, here’s the last of the myths: The affirmation of animus imponentis does not cohere with a hardy confessionalism, but corresponds to, permits, makes allowances for or encourages a weak confessional position. Well, AI, as I tried to say thus far, rightly understood will be affirmed by all confessionalists, whether full or strict subscriptionists, sistive subscriptionists, good faith subscriptionists (particularly as it’s referred to in the PCA), even by those who hold some form of ipsissima verba confessionalism. And, I have actually heard some people say something like that. That means the very words themselves – that is what we are in the strictest sense and there is actually no one in the history that I know of in American Presbyterianism who took that position. As strong as JH Thornwell is, that’s not his position. Or, RL Brekenridge, or Gerardo, or those fellows – They, in fact, made it clear they didn’t hold an ipsissima verba – we confess the Word of God, ipsissima verba – very single word. I’ve heard people say this is the full subscriptionist position. That isn’t the full subscriptionist position. That’s not what Smith says, or Joe Pipa says, or any of those fellows, or Dr. Knight says. That’s not the position. But, it’s interesting, I guess there are always disciples that outstrip the ones who set forth some of these teachings.

Properly understanding, I think, the concept of animus helps us better to grasp the whole constitutional process, furnishing us with the proper categories for understanding our tasks as judicatories. And, that’s the thing. That’s what I come back to. We’re not going to get a confession that confesses the Word of God that’s going to solve all our problems that means that sessions and presbyteries and general assemblies won’t have any work to do. That’s just not the way it works. We will confess this together and we will have to administer it together, and in the administration of things and in the application of things there are going to be differences. And, the animus imponentis is trying to see something of what is the lay of the land here? What are these differences? What’s most important? What’s of lesser importance? And, the animus imponentis as we’ve talked about it thus far is something to understand that concept – helps us to understand better how we can live together as a confessional church.

Let’s pray. Our Father, we do look to you and we pray that you would guide us. Lord, let us never look to even the means of grace in the sense that we would make them ends in themselves, but that in the means you’ve appointed, the preaching and the sacraments and prayer, we would truly be led to and rest and trust more fully in Jesus Christ, Who is the end of all of those means, the One to Whom those means lead and point. May we rest in Him, and in that resting confess together the truth and in that confessing together the truth seek to esteem You above all and one another as better than ourselves.

And we pray this in Jesus Name, Amen.

END OF SESSION ONE.

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